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TOTAL DURATION: 1h 31m 14s

This overview chapter contains general information about Houdini that will help you get started with important concepts and ideas. While at first, you might not understand what it all means, this chapter will be a valuable reference point as you work through the foundation tutorials and build up your knowledge.

If you already work with 3D software then learning Houdini will be a transfer of existing skills. You will learn how to interactively build-up shots using the scene view and shelf tools, then how to work with the nodes and networks to take advantage of Houdini’s procedural nature.

If you are new to 3D and Computer Graphics then Houdini is a great package to start with. The Foundations material assumes some general knowledge, therefore you may want to read up on CG concepts that you are unfamiliar with. In the end, Houdini will help you achieve a deeper understanding of what goes on under the hood of not only Houdini but other 3D apps as well.

Houdini Foundations for Houdini 19.5 is now available as Downloadable PDF and a Print-on-Demand book through the Lulu Ebook company. This 224 page book contains 9 chapters designed to help artists take their first steps into Houdini.

CREATED BY

rmagee
ROBERT MAGEE

Robert Magee is a Senior Product Marketing Manager at SideFX who has been working with Houdini for 20 years. He has created lots of learning material and demos designed to help artists understand how going procedural with Houdini can benefit their work.

More from Robert Magee

COMMENTS

  • AlfredoSMC 2 years, 3 months ago  | 

    there is an incredible variety of ways to get results with the tools, thanks!

  • LukeP 2 years, 3 months ago  | 

    Great intro for newcomers to Houdini! Thanks for putting this together Robert.

  • limatvfx 2 years, 3 months ago  | 

    Thanks a lot.. I have been searching for long day.. thankyou once again. I am form Tamilnadu INDIA

  • zev0 2 years, 3 months ago  | 

    King Robert from Sidex guild is on the move again. Dear Robert I am showing my students this as example, how to do a proper, sharp and exact tutorials. Your contribution to Houdini universe is impeccable. Congratulation dear master.

    • rmagee 2 years, 3 months ago  | 

      Thanks for the kind feedback - glad that the tutorials are helping out!

  • 9th_Gluon 2 years, 3 months ago  | 

    this series is good but not as good as the football tutorial. Nothing beats the football tutorial. ヽ(´▽`)/

    • rmagee 2 years, 3 months ago  | 

      Updating the football tutorial right now - it will be back soon with videos

    • rmagee 2 years, 3 months ago  | 

      FOOTBALL TUTORIAL: https://www.sidefx.com/tutorials/foundations-model-render-animate/

      • 9th_Gluon 2 years, 3 months ago  | 

        (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧
        Thank you very much.

  • weierba913 2 years, 3 months ago  | 

    I like the form of this tutorial!

  • expat42451 2 years, 2 months ago  | 

    Just started with Apprentice on Majaro Linux....Absolute cudos to Monica in support for the kind assistance on getting the license server issue straightened out. My creative work has been here to fore photography and I am very excited to start with Houudini. Have watched a number of the tutorials and those of you that have produced them deserve cudos as well for the excellent work you have done here. This is my first 3 D software experience and the tutorials are an excellent introduction.

    Many kind thanks for the program, the great support and the tutorials

    expat42451
    Cotacachi Ecuador

  • BrucePPV 2 years, 2 months ago  | 

    I like this much better than searching through YouTube to find tuts from people with varying degrees of knowledge. I just installed Houdini, so I plan on going through all the info here, then start playing.... rather than just diving in which always ends in frustration

  • skygenesis86 2 years, 1 month ago  | 

    I have a question, I am following along and got up to the point to press play but when I press play nothing happens they dont fall. Is there something that I can check?

  • TheinThan 2 years, 1 month ago  | 

    Hello Sir,I am from Myanmar.First Time user Houdini.Because of the politiccal situation.I canot go outside and so I learn self study.I have a question I make cup exactly like your step but when I use shutter on model,doesnot look like you.Inside of the cup is not like you.ployface is not flat anymore.How can I solve it.

  • dimitridev 2 years, 1 month ago  | 

    thank you, such a good introduction! :)

  • PolyNOD 2 years, 1 month ago  | 

    It was so clear! Thanks!

  • Shezan 2 years, 1 month ago  | 

    Thanks you so much, it's very good performance topics.

  • hyeonshin 2 years ago  | 

    I use the polybevel. but spares are also affected.

  • kimjsik08 2 years ago  | 

    Where are the project files? I cannot keep up with the tutorials unless I try the exercises myself.

  • ZPC 1 year, 11 months ago  | 

    thansk for you lensons ,it help me more

  • saif0316 1 year, 11 months ago  | 

    At 4:22 when I add in the second randomize, it doesn't scale like it does in yours. Am I missing something?
    Btw thank you so much!

    • saif0316 1 year, 11 months ago  | 

      I found it! I capitalized the S on pscale so it should be pscale instead of pScale.
      I'm surprised! that changing the attribute name could have that effect. That is so cool!

  • dhuiting 1 year, 10 months ago  | 

    I downloaded Houdini apprentice, but Boolean and Polyextrude are not available nodes in this version. Do I have to purchase Houdini Indie to follow along?

  • phil8 1 year, 10 months ago  | 

    Hey Robert nice job on the instructional content as always. I noticed that there is a Foundation Book that you can buy printed. Will there be a pdf or e-book version of this? Thanks!

  • eosmalta 1 year, 10 months ago  | 

    I'm new in houdini, and i'm loving the free content dor begginers. After I finish learning the basics, would anyone have any courses to recommend ? I already work in the industry as a 3D artist, but I want to be able to focus on FX.

  • sophia73583 1 year, 8 months ago  | 

    This tutorial is very helpful to get started! But I ran into an issue when adding rbdBulletSolver around 5:15. When I set display to the rbdBulletSolver node, the mesh of objects disappeared. I followed the exact steps so I'm not sure what went wrong there. Any thoughts?

    • simplychenable 1 year, 4 months ago  | 

      I ran into the same 'issue'. turns out it stems from where the playhead is in the timeline. for some reason it was at frame 3 when I applied the solver. The torus will come back once you drag the playhead back to frame 1.

      hope that helps.

  • zahedmirza 1 year, 7 months ago  | 

    Hi Robert, Thank you for providing such an easy-to-follow tutorial. As a beginner, it was extremely helpful.
    Looking forward for your tutorials on motion design with Houdini and UE5.
    Once again, thank you very much.

  • Lightbox3d 1 year, 7 months ago  | 

    When I download the project files, they are ll empty...

    • rmagee 1 year, 4 months ago  | 

      There are files in the subfolders - you will create the main hip files in the lessons

  • Kari66 1 year, 5 months ago  | 

    Hi Robert,

    regarding the first video of Houdini work space at a certain point once I added the grid I lost all the colors!!
    FYI I am using Mac.

    Thank you so much in advance for your reply.

    • rmagee 1 year, 4 months ago  | 

      Not sure why that happened - could you share the file in the learning forum.

  • JanMartinB 1 year, 4 months ago  | 

    I have a question regarding this foundation series - Does the video tutorials cover all the information that is in the "foundations book" or is there additional information in the book? How would you in that case recommend using these resources? Thank you.

    • rmagee 1 year, 4 months ago  | 

      The overview chapter has a lot of reference information that goes beyond these videos. For the other foundation chapters, the videos and print match up. We did both because some people like to watch videos and others like to reference the printed page. l

  • adamghering 1 year, 3 months ago  | 

    I cant seem to find the support files. (scene files) when I download them I get the folder structure but nothing is inside them, it says 108 megs but I cant fined anything in the folders

    • adamghering 1 year, 3 months ago  | 

      for example when you get to working with nodes, there is a box a sphere and a boolean, but nothing before that goes over how to navigate, or set that system up. I would like a project file to look at or at least a step by step to recreate; otherwise how will I follow along if I cant recreate or have access to the file?

      • Bradley Newman 6 months, 3 weeks ago  | 

        Agree, the Working with Nodes video is particularly difficult to follow without the file.

  • natrianvfx 1 year, 3 months ago  | 

    I loved this tutorial. Started yesterday with my Houdini Journey. I'm coming from Nuke so I can relate some things but it's really fun to think of all of Houdini possibilities.

  • natrianvfx 1 year, 3 months ago  | 

    I've just finished with this foundations tutorial and I'm very grateful. It was a great introduction to Houdini. The only thing that I can't figure it out is that I have no color reference when using the "Soft edit radius" slider. But otherwise it has been a series of incredibly useful videos to introduce yourself to this software.

    • natrianvfx 1 year, 3 months ago  | 

      Nevermind, just restarted Houdini and now it shows me the color reference using the "soft edit radius" slider. As always in life it got fixed shutting off and open it again haha!

  • mahmoudkashef 1 year, 2 months ago  | 

    i hope to learn this amazing app

  • calderonmateo67 1 year, 2 months ago  | 

    Thank you very much for the videos, no disrespect to courses or anything but literally everyone who starts in houdini should watch them.

  • Hakobus 10 months, 3 weeks ago  | 

    This might be quite literally the worst, most confusing, "beginner introduction" tutorial I've ever tried watching. The host goes way too fast and doesn't telegraph at all what he's about to do or why or even where in the UI. I get that some people like that style of tutorial, but personally I find it tedious to have to keep pausing and rewinding a tutorial that's supposed to be about the basics of the software and meant for beginners.

    • Hakobus 10 months, 3 weeks ago  | 

      After watching a few more of the series, I guess only the "The Houdini Workspace" part of these tutorials is bad. I have no idea why someone would choose to put that one as the first, as it is as I described. The rest are much better and easier to follow, even if the host still quite often does not telegraph what he's going to do, but rather does things first and only then says what he's doing.

  • Fernando_Criativo3d 10 months, 2 weeks ago  | 

    Hi I am new to Houdini and will be very nice to have the models used in the tutorials to follow along.

    Thanks!

    • rmagee 10 months, 2 weeks ago  | 

      All models can be found by pressing the tab key in the scene view and typing "testgeometry" Then you can choose from the various models used in this lesson.

  • Fernando_Criativo3d 10 months, 2 weeks ago  | 

    Ah...didnt know that! even the soccer ball? didnt fint it!

    • NWink07 10 months, 2 weeks ago  | 

      Yeah I don't see them all either.

  • khaledreez22 8 months, 2 weeks ago  | 

    bro, literally the best introduction to Houdini. thank you so much, learned a lot

    • rmagee 8 months, 2 weeks ago  | 

      Glad that you found it helpful.

  • thoresiqus 7 months, 2 weeks ago  | 

    Honestly - it's kinda not bad, and help me started ...strated to the Earth orbit using my butthurt acceleration :D
    So many - unnecessary moves, or jumping between anything, or montage ... Like, you know, drawing an owl meme.

    Putting this aside - I gained some knowledge.

  • Bradley Newman 6 months, 3 weeks ago  | 

    Where are the project files? In particular, the Working with Nodes file with the box and sphere boolean example?

  • LowJacK604 5 months, 1 week ago  | 

    For an introduction to workspace, this is complete random nonsense.

  • Sorann 5 months ago  | 

    Hi, i downloaded the project file but nothing belong the lessons except the __fur_dude_start__ file , the other videos i don't find any of the examples that used in the videos... any HELP

  • Sorann 5 months ago  | 

    OKEY i found rmagee answer "All models can be found by pressing the tab key in the scene view and typing "testgeometry" Then you can choose from the various models used in this lesson." but the SQUAB model has no animation, and PIG model comes in my view port in pitch black color ?

  • Davinci06 4 months ago  | 

    Awesome tutorial but the missing "soccerball" file issue is quite disappointing.

  • Loha 3 months, 2 weeks ago  | 

    Thank you Robert!

  • Saif_Yousif 3 months ago  | 

    thank you mr Robert, you are amzing!

  • Anonymous 2 months ago  | 

    <h1>dfgdg

  • mariam.keresa 2 weeks, 1 day ago  | 

    hi, can i do same thing with different shape? i tried sphere and i failed.

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